Initiating Change: Leading from Your Position

Initiating Change:Leading from Your Position NACADA Summer Institute 2011 Joanne K. Damminger, Ed.D. Salem Community College Thank you to Ruth Darling, Jenny Bloom , Charlie Nutt, and Pamela Marsh-Williams for content provided in this presentation .

Overview • Defining Leadership • Leadership Application • Fullan’s Change Framework • Leadership Strategies • Assessment • Impact of Change • Reflections – Just Do It!

Leading Change…ARE YOU • A person who makes change happen? • A person who watches change happen? • A person who wonders what happened? Why? Super, 1980

What We Have Learned This Week “The History and Organization of Academic Advising” Maura Reynolds • Advising is core to the services offered to students • Advising must be congruent with organizational mission • There is need to create shared vision for student success

What We Have Learned “Advising and the Campus Environment” Blane Harding Know your institution: • Organizational structure • Leadership • Mission and goals • Desired outcomes • Opportunities • No one size fits all

What We Have Learned “Designing Effective Advisor Development Programs” Becky Ryan • Advising is grounded in student success and retention • Advising must be done well • Advisor training and development is crucial to a successful program

What We Have Learned “Assessment of Academic Advising” Charlie Nutt Advising: • Involves developing consensus about student learning • Involves understanding student learning • Is designed to support improvements in advising that will contribute to improvements in learning

Leadership Burns (1995) posits that leadership is one of the most studied but least understood concepts on earth. “I’m talking about leadership as the development of vision and strategies, the alignment of relevant people behind those strategies, and the empowerment of individuals to make the vision happen, despite obstacles.” Kotter, 1999

What is Leadership? “Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers [constituents] who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes” (p. 102). Rost, 1993

Reflections…Take a Minute to STAND… THINK OF: • An improvement (change) that you lead successfully or • A specific improvement you want to lead (Action Plan) or • A change initiative in which you were not included or • All three

What We Know about Successful Leadership FIRST: Leaders must know thyself! SECOND: Leaders must know the Culture/Institution/Organization/Family • Organizational structure • Leadership • Mission and goals • Desired outcomes • Opportunities • No one size fits all

Leading From Your Position THIRD: Adopt a model for change • Examine institutional culture and change • Consider data and assessment as key components of initiatives that focus on change • Minimize the risks and calculate the benefits • Rebound from setbacks • Institutionalize change You Can Lead from Your Position! JUST DO IT!

Plan, Act, Observe, Reflect PLAN REFLECT ACT OBSERVE PLAN REFLECT ACT OBSERVE Lewin; McTaggart

Five Practices of Leadership • Model the way • Inspire a shared vision • Challenge the process • Enable others to act • Encourage the heart Kouzes and Posner, 2002

Fullan’s Leadership of Change • Sense of moral purpose • Understanding the change process • Establishing relationships • Knowledge creation and sharing • Coherence making Fullan, 2001

Moral Purpose (MP) • Act to make a positive difference in lives of others and the organization (colleagues, administration, faculty, students). • MP is critical to the long-term success of what we do in organizations

Understand the Change Process • Recognize change is a process • Change is complex and confusing; • 6 guidelines: • Goal is not to innovate the most • Best ideas are not enough • Appreciate early difficulties (implementation dip) • Redefine resistance as a potential positive force • Change is transforming the culture • Never a checklist, always complexity

Relationship Building • It is important to create and foster relationships with diverse people (people different than you) and groups • Effective leaders foster intentional and purposeful interaction

Knowledge Creation and Sharing There is continual need to increase knowledge in and out of educational organizations Predicated on first 3 points • Moral purpose • Understanding change • Relationship building

Coherence Making • Ambiguity accompanies change • Leaders try to clarify • Seeing valuable patterns brings about coherence • Tensions bring about the greatest accomplishments

Why Resistance to Change? • Change as loss • Change challenges competence • Change creates confusion • Change causes conflict Evans, 1996 Goal is to increase fear of “not trying.”

Summary of Loss Too often we approach change with a powerful double standard: We see the value of change, but by other people. Changes we seek in others we associate positively with growth, But change that others seek in us, we associate negatively as we experience a sense of loss and resistance. Evans, 1996

Revisit your Reflections…What specific improvement do you want to lead? What will you do differently? How will you lead in your culture of change? • Sense of moral purpose • Understanding the change process • Establishing relationships • Knowledge creation and sharing • Coherence making Fullan, 2001

A FEW TIPStoRemember

Institutionalize the Change • Create a tangible product to serve as an example of the accomplishment and guide further improvement • Hold a debriefing meeting • Write a report • Post results on the web • Present at a local or regional conference • Prepare a poster session • Be sure to include what has been learned and next steps

Win by the “Littles” “When leaders deliberately cultivate a strategy of small wins, they actively make people feel like winners and make it easier for people to want to go along with their requests” (p. 211). Kouzes and Posner, 2002

Avoid “Christmas Tree” Effect It is not the goal to have the highest number of innovative projects that glitter from a distance. “So many innovations, so little time.” (Fullan, 2001, p. 36)

Put Your Plan into Action Follow your change model! Be strategic! JUST DO IT! Nike, June 1971

Leading From Your Position The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. (Max DePree)

References Burns, J. M. (1995). Transactional and transforming leadership. In J. T. Wren (Ed.), Theleader’s companion: Insights on leadership through the ages. (pp.100-101). New York: The Free Press. Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. NY: Collins. Evans, R. (1996). The human side of school change: Reform, resistance, and the real-life problems of innovation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). Primal leadership: Realizing the power of emotional intelligence. Boston: Harvard Business Press. Kotter, J.P. (1999). John P. Kotter on what leaders really do. Boston: Harvard Business Review. Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2002). The leadership challenge. (3rd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cont

References Quinn, R. E. (2000). Change the world: How ordinary people can accomplish extraordinaryresults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Reiter, A. F. (2005, March/April). “Meet Joe White: New UI president talks about leadership, goals and responsibility.” Illinois Alumni Magazine, 17(5). Rost, J. C. (1993). Leadership for the twenty-first century. Westport, CT: Praeger. Super, D.E. (1980). A life-span , life space approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 16, 282-298. Tinto, V. (1998). Colleges as communities: Taking research on student persistence seriously. The Review of Higher Education, 21(2), 167-177.

Initiating Change: Leading from Your Position